The present article deals with the fate of the 1976 Chlorides and Chemical Pollutants Conventions concluded by the riparian states of the Rhine and in the case of the latter Convention also by the EEC. It further analyzes the decision of 8 January 1979 taken by the District Court of Rotterdam in the case of certain Dutch horticulturists and the Dutch Stichting ‘Reinwater’ against the French Mines Domaniales de Potasse d'Alsace.

The author pleads that the Dutch Government institute proceedings against France before the I.C.J. considering the fact that the French Government refused to ratify the 1976 Chlorides Convention and the fact that the proceedings at present taking place before the Dutch Courts will not lead to a diminuition of the salt-load of the Rhine.

In 1918, just before the end of the First World War, a booklet of barely ninety pages was published in the Hague under the title “De Drie Treden van het Volkenrecht” (in English “The Three Stages in the Evolution of the Law of Nations”). For a work dealing with a subject relating to international law, it was an incredible success: it was twice reprinted in its Dutch version and was translated into French, German and English. The key to its success may well have been its simple plot: as in a Punch and Judy show, the cast had but two main characters – the good boy and the bad boy. The hero was Hugo Grotius, whose 400th birthday we are commemorating this year; the villain was Eméric de Vattel, a man who wrote a book in 1758 in which, according to the author of “The Three Stages”, he gave a Judas kiss to the hero precisely at the moment that he might have become victorious. The author leaves us in no doubt where his sympathies lie; the lines in which he characterizes the qualities of his two leading characters by comparing their Christian names have become quite famous: “the Dutchman is called Hugh (Huig in Dutch), a bluff and sturdy name; the other is called Emeric: the name of a balletmaster‥”.

This article examines the extent to which state officials are shielded from foreign jurisdiction by functional immunity when they stand accused of committing international crimes. It argues that the development of the principle of individual responsibility for international crimes should be understood as posing a limit to the operation of the rule of functional immunity. States have agreed that international crimes, even when committed within the context of the ostensible exercise of state authority under international law, do not qualify as official acts for functional immunity purposes since they can no longer be solely attributed to the state and not to the official personally. The article thereby takes issue with the increasingly popular conceptualization of functional immunity in terms of an act of state immunity, in which attribution, rather than exclusive attribution, is the controlling notion. It does acknowledge that international law may pose limits on the competence of national courts to establish jurisdiction in certain circumstances, but proposes to undo the discussion of the shackles of immunity law and to recognize the operation of an alternative, less far-reaching legal principle.

In recent years various new international courts and tribunals have been set up and several systems of compulsory jurisdiction established. As a result, litigation, which used to be quite rare in international affairs, is now increasingly common, prompting questions about both the relation between adjudication and more traditional methods of handling disputes, and the interrelation of different courts and tribunals. Using the evidence provided by recent cases, this article examines legal disputes and the current role of adjudication. Three specific matters are considered: the relation between adjudication and negotiation; situations of overlapping and competing jurisdiction and their consequences; and how adjudication relates to the work of political organisations.

The author's conclusion is that to ask whether the present assortment of dispute settlement procedures should be thought of as complementary or contradictory is to oversimplify the question. Diplomatic and legal processes sometimes work in harmony and sometimes in opposition and the same is true of different judicial institutions. If international law continues to develop and eventually becomes an integrated legal system, many of these uncertainties will disappear. Until then, however, the mosaic of dispute settlement procedures will keep their contrarious character.

Some three decades ago, two African international legal scholars explored, in separate essays, the impact of the newly independent African states on the development of certain areas of international law. The argument advanced in these discussions was straightforward enough: that the participation of the new African states in the international legal order, together with the unprecedented developments in international organizations and technology, had greatly circumscribed the frontiers of traditional international law; and that Africa, as a continent, had ceased to be merely an object of a Eurocentric international law, and was gradually taking up its place as a subject of, and an active participant in, contemporary universal international law.

Dutch health care occasionally comes under close international scrutiny. The interest usually centres on euthanasia and assisted suicide in the Netherlands. A development of perhaps more lasting importance, however, has so far virtually escaped attention elsewhere. It is the incorporation of a bill on patients' rights into the Dutch Civil Code. This article focuses on the new Dutch Act on Medical Services, which came into force on April 1, 1995. As a point of reference, English medical law will be referred to.

It would be a remarkable and astonishing thing: to find a generally acceptable definition of aggression. We know that all endeavours up till now failed completely, including the labours of the Special Committee on defining aggression, that met in New York last year.

When we look at its report, we see in the Annexes draft-definitions of aggression and suggestions as to definitions. In view of this the French member of the Committee at the time stated that, in his opinion, the Committee had carried out its terms of reference, viz. “to submit draft definitions of aggression or draft statements of the notion of aggression”. I would submit that the Special Committee did not carry out its functions in this regard. In the Annexes of the Report drafts are given proposed by individual members of the Committee. Those drafts were not drafts of the Committee, but drafts of some of its members.

International organisations are endowed with privileges and immunities to safeguard their independence, including, in particular, vis-à-vis their host state. This article first briefly considers the sources of privileges and immunities applicable to international organisations in the Netherlands, which is the host state of many international organizations. The article then focuses on the immunity of international organisations from the jurisdiction of the Dutch courts. The article reviews the relevant national case law in which there have been important developments in recent years against the backdrop of the relevant case law of the European Court of Human Rights. In respect of international organisations that enjoy immunity formulated in ‘functional’ (as opposed to ‘absolute’) terms, the article develops some general guidance to determine when that immunity applies. The article then considers the clash between an international organisation's entitlement to jurisdictional immunity and the rights of claimants to have access to the courts under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The article suggests that whether the right to immunity prevails depends on the extent to which the particular organisation's functionality is at issue. In this light, the article critically examines the recent judgements in the incidental proceedings in the Srebrenica case against the United Nations. Finally, in terms of the procedural position of international organisations before the Dutch courts, the article suggests that to enjoy jurisdictional immunity, organisations would be well-advised to actively challenge the jurisdiction of the courts.

Introductory Note

The Dutch Committee of Inquiry on the War in Iraq presented its report to Prime Minister Jan-Peter Balkenende and provided copies to both houses of parliament on 12 January 2010. The Committee had been established by the Balkenende cabinet on 6 March 2009 to conduct an independent inquiry into the decision-making process leading to Dutch political (but not military) support of the war in Iraq, in general, and into aspects of international law, intelligence and information gathering as well as alleged Dutch military involvement in Iraq, in particular.[…]

In view of the wide interest in the subject matter, including considerable international interest on the findings of the Committee on the international law basis, the Board of Editors has decided to translate this international law chapter into English which is reproduced here in its entirety. References to other chapters of the report have been retained. The Board of Editors gratefully acknowledges the kind permission of the Committee of Inquiry and Boom publishers to publish this text.

After the successful conclusion of the Third UN Conference on the Law of the Sea, a number of developing countries outside the Antarctic Treaty System began to pay increasingly close attention to Antarctica. It was said that there were abundant valuable resources there; the Antarctic Treaty Consultative parties (ATCPs) began to negotiate an Antarctic minerals regime. They suggested that the concept of the common heritage of mankind (CHM), applicable to the international sea-bed area, be expanded to apply to Antarctica, particularly to its resources. These countries raised the curtain on debating the question of Antarctica at the UN forum, and made the following question a subject for discussion by the international community: does the concept of CHM apply to Antarctica, and, if so, to what extent? This question has represented one of the strongest external challenges to the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS); indeed, it has been the central focus in the development of interest in the Antarctic minerals regime.

Institution-building in international law is an architecture of compromise. The United Nations, poised to make one of its most ambitious institutional and theoretical leaps since the creation of the human rights system in Geneva, again finds itself caught between the impulse towards universalism and the hesitancies of statism. The institution in question is the proposed International Criminal Court.

It may not seem a very ambitious project to show which sources Grotius used in his two systematic expositions of International Law, De jure praedae and De jure belli ac pacis. One could simply refer to the indices of authors cited by Grotius in the English translations of the “Classics of International Law” series and analyse these impressive lists, looking, inter alia, for significant differences between them. However, such an approach, though no doubt useful, is only a very partial answer to the question of the “sources”, or perhaps even the “foundations”, of the Grotian system. I would suggest that it could even be seriously misleading. First of all, we have to assess Grotius' academic tools, with their mixture of references to the Scriptures, the patres ecclesiae and classical poets and philosophers in preference to sixteenth and seventeenth century authors. What is their function? As our interest is in international law, and not in philology or theology, we may well wonder how we are to deal with this mass of materials, most of which seems at first sight quite irrelevant to our subject. The abundance of wide ranging quotations in De jure belli ac pacis led Voltaire to accuse Grotius of pedantry, a charge that was also made against him as a politician and a diplomat by his contemporaries as well as by historians. If we do not consider this sufficient reason for disregarding, inter alia Plautus, Ovid, St. Ambrose and St. Augustine as “ornamental” rather than “structural” elements in the Grotian system, we may be encouraged by the example of as ardent an admirer of Grotius as Telders. His severe pruning of the overburdened text of De jure belli ac pacis was meant to reintroduce the book into general use as “the first treatise on international law ever written that aimed at completeness”.6

To enumerate the recognized manifestations of international law, several orders may be followed, depending on the criterion used. One criterion would be the distinction between written and unwritten manifestations. On this basis, the recognized manifestations of international law may be enumerated in the following order: (1) certain decisions of international organizations, (2) treaties, (3) certain judicial decisions – all being written manifestations – (4) custom, (5) the general principles of law recognized by civilized nations, (6) complementary natural law – all being unwritten. Another criterion, and a far more meaningful one, is that of hierarchy. Before setting forth the correct hierarchical order among the recognized manifestations of international law, hierarchy as such should briefly be discussed.

A controversial issue in international humanitarian law is whether violations of norms applicable in internal armed conflicts constitute criminal offences under international law and can be adjudicated as such. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) recently faced this question in the context of a preliminary motion lodged by the Defence alleging lack of jurisdiction in the Tadić case. The indictment against Dusko Tadić charges the accused, inter alia, with violating the laws or customs of war, ‘recognised by Article 3 of the Statute of the Tribunal and Article 3(1 )(a) of the Geneva Conventions of 1949’ (Article 3 common to the Geneva Conventions enumerates prohibitions applicable in conflicts not of an international character).

The disputes relating to prompt release constitute an important part of the case law of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. The frequency of the use of prompt release proceedings may be explained by the fact that illegal fisheries have increased owing to the exhaustion of biological resources. Considering that the exhaustion of renewable resources entails a serious problem, conflicts regarding illegal fisheries and the detention of vessels and crews will increase. This study examines the procedure for prompt release under Article 292 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea by focusing on the case law of the Tribunal. In particular, this study addresses the issues concerning substantive and procedural requirements provided in Article 292, locus standi, the relation between proceedings of the Tribunal and of domestic courts, and criteria for evaluating ‘reasonable’ bond.

For all its merits and shortcomings, the Peace of Westphalia is a crossroad of European history. It represents one of the very rare moments of concerted action on the part of its nations to rearrange the disarray of their jigsaw puzzle. It must be said that Europe has not exactly been blessed with such tokens of united will-power. Only three or four serious efforts are worth mentioning as having had any lasting consequence: Westphalia(1648), Vienna(1814–15), Versailles (1919) and, with some restrictions, San Francisco (1945–46).

On Friday 3 March 2000, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) delivered its judgment in the case of Tihomir Blaŝkić, a Bosnian Croat General under whose command, between May 1992 and January 1994, members of the armed forces of the Croatian Defence Unit (‘HVO’) committed serious violations of international humanitarian law against the Bosnian Muslim civilian population in the Laŝva Valley, Central Bosnia. The crimes consisted of a widespread and systematic attack on cities, towns and villages inhabited by Bosnian Muslims: killing and causing serious injury or harm to Bosnian Muslim civilians, including women, children, the elderly and the infirm; burning Muslims homes, plundering of Bosnian Muslim property including livestock, destruction of mosques and institutions dedicated to education, detention and forcible transfer of civilians, using Bosnian Muslim civilians as human shields and inhuman and cruel treatment of Bosnian Muslims civilian detainees in detention facilities.

‘Error is the mark of the higher organisms’. This statement struck me again when, composing myself to the honourable and pleasant task of preparing a contribution to the Liber Amicorum for my learned friend Bert Voskuil, I reconsidered ‘the Case of Zaire’, a case which raised the question whether and to what extent a judicial error was committed by the Dutch court that declared a foreign State bankrupt. If the judgment has to be considered an error of law, that court certainly qualified as a ‘higher organism’.

Let us first look at the facts of the case.